8 Examples of What Not to Do On Your Ebook Landing Page

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If visitors can’t judge your ebook by its landing page, then you won’t get any leads. Image by Karen Horton via Flickr.

Love ’em or hate ’em, read ’em now or download for later, ebooks are a great incentive for your lead gen landing pages. When framed attractively, they can help your company educate potential customers, fill your pipeline with qualified leads and position your business as an authority in your industry.

But before you can make your ebook into an effective lead generation tool, you need to get your prospects to download it from a landing page.

If your landing page fails to convince prospects that they need your ebook, then you can’t deliver value and you won’t collect leads.

And all the time you spent putting the ebook together will have been in vain.

Let’s take a step back and learn from the mistakes of others. Here are eight ebook landing pages and how they could be tweaked for a bigger impact – and more leads.

The headline is descriptive but doesn’t inspire action

Okay, so you get an idea of what this page is about right away – but the headline doesn’t inspire action. There’s a barely-legible subhead with a call to action, but because of the tiny font, it’s easy to gloss over.

Here’s an example of a headline that Beretta could use to inspire more leads to take action:

The Wrong Caliber Could Leave You Defenseless Download Our Free Guide to Choosing the Right Caliber for Self-Defense

This headline triggers the fear of making the wrong choice in caliber (thereby leaving you defenseless). The sub-headline then provides the solution: download the free guide.

The lower half of the page takes up valuable real estate

It’s hard to tell from the screenshot alone, but the entire bottom section is useless. It’s just a photo with what looks like a button… but clicking on it does nothing.

It looks more like an advertisement that was just thrown onto the bottom of this landing page. Beretta would be much better served to use this space for testimonials to cement the benefits of the ebook.

No one wants to share your landing page

The social media tiles on your ebook landing page may help to make your boss happy, but they only serve to distract your prospects from the goal.

The headline doesn’t speak to benefits

What is really being sold here? Is the site selling “Elite Hitting Secrets”? Or are they selling the ability to crush a baseball so hard that you become a hitting legend yourself?

I think you know the answer.

And this is the difference between selling features and selling benefits.

Yes, they are selling the feature of teaching the user how to hit better, but the ultimate goal is different. What they’re really selling is the benefits: the feeling you get when you crush the ball and are better able to contribute to your team.

So let’s try to sell what people are really buying, shall we?

How about this:

Awaken the Baseball Hitting Legend Inside You Learn the Hitting Secrets Baseball’s Elite Hitters Use to Crush It out of the Park

The lightbox increases the number of clicks

When you click on the call to action, a lightbox with the opt-in form pops up.

Why make the visitor click, and then type and then click again?

It’s worth testing against a simple opt-in form right on the page. Type. Click “Go.”

3. Fight Media

Really? The ULTIMATE guide?

Okay. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and accept that this ebook might just be the ultimate guide to Twitter hacks… though there’s nothing on the page that would back up that statement.

Even if there was, it’s still not a very good headline. Because it’s just a name.

It doesn’t tell me what the content is going to teach me. It doesn’t tell me why I should be downloading the ebook in the first place.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with calling your ebook the ultimate guide, but use a headline that sells that ultimate guide so well that people can’t resist downloading it. Speak to the benefits.

Here’s an example:

Turn your Business into a Twitter Superstar Learn the Little-Known Hacks Big Brands Use to Promote Themselves to Millions of Followers on Twitter

The headline could be more specific

This headline cuts to the heart of what a lot of businesses need from their content marketing efforts: more traffic. Why not go a step further and talk about what traffic will really mean for a business?

Here’s an example:

How to Build Your Business Blog’s Traffic, Leads and Sales: Step by Step

The form is too long and blends in with the rest of the page

Do you really need all of these fields? If the goal of your page is to send leads to your sales team, then you can probably cut down on the number of fields.

For example, if you are asking for a visitor’s website, you don’t need to ask for the company name or industry. The information can likely be found on the website and your sales team can add it to your CRM software themselves.

The header is confusing as hell

There is so much wrong with this header that I am going to put it into a bullet list so it’s easier to read.

The headline doesn’t touch on any of the benefits of the ebook. Focus on what this ebook will do for me, not what it’s called.

No one cares if this is an exclusive report from your partner, and no one cares about your sponsor. Include this information somewhere else on the page – not in the area where people look first.

The “Click below to download the report” section looks like a button, but it’s not. It’s also misleading; I don’t just have to click, I have to fill in a form and then click “Submit.”

The background image doesn’t seem to have anything to do with “social strategy success.” Maybe calendars are a part of that “success,” but that’s not clear.

The copy feels like an afterthought

My eyes glaze over when I try to read the copy on this page. Why not throw the benefits of this ebook into a bullet list so that visitors can easily scan through what they’re getting?

What’s with all the fake calls to action?

The header has a line that looks like a button.

The copy also has what looks like a button.

Both are bigger than the only real call to action. This is almost too much to take!

Lose the confusing orange rectangles and use call to action copy that tells the user what they’re clicking on. Something like this:

Download the Blueprints Now!

You think I’m going to tell you my revenue for an ebook?

Come on.

I get that you want to give your sales team the information they need to make smart qualifying decisions. I also understand that with revenue data in your list, you can segment the type of marketing emails that you send. But do you really think that I have enough trust in your company at this stage in the game to be telling you my revenue?

Get real.

This is what your sales team is for: qualifying. If you would like all of your marketing to be automated, then simply build these questions into your sales funnel.

The bottom line is this:

Only ask for what you really need up front. You can always get more information at a later time.